Finding Joy and the will to continue

Front Page Forums Meditation Finding Joy and the will to continue

Tagged: 

This topic contains 12 replies, has 5 voices, and was last updated by  Anonymous 7 years, 9 months ago.

Viewing 13 posts - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #593

    praxis
    Member

    I have been attempting to establish a regular meditation practice on and off for a number of years now without much success, usually getting frustrated by a lack of any results or progress within a month and giving up. I have recently been trying by following the instructions in “The Mind Illuminated.” I have been meditating every day for a month now I am trying to be diligent and following the instructions up to the second stage, but have found that every day since I begun it has just felt like something else I need to do on my “to do list” and still find myself using significant willpower to to it.

    I have reread in the book a number of times the section on finding joy in your practice and positive reinforcement, giving myself positive encouragement along the way and trying to monitor my body as I meditate for positive feelings. But I still find my meditations more an act of willpower than a happy experience I look forward to. Is there something more I could try or should I just persist?

    #594

    Ivan Ganza
    Member

    Hi Praxis,

    Based on what you wrote, it seems you are setting up a situation where you are looking for progress and results. My first suggestion would be to try and let go (as much as you can) of the desire for progress.
    Try to find a way to engage in the practice playfully and openly, without too much looking ahead for results. Like a kid playing on the beach or something.

    I know, it is not typical. Usually in the west we decide to do something, have the result in mind, and steer towards that — and we are supposed to get somewhere right? From my experience, meditation cannot be approached that way.

    This is more like you are planting seeds and preparing your garden. You have no idea right when the seeds will sprout and flower though. Do you uproot the seeds every day to check? Of course not, nothing
    would grow like that. Plant them, take care of them, let them mature and grow in their own time, their own way. Eventually they will sprout.

    You don’t do meditation. Meditation does you.

    Try to see if you can plant your garden, cast off your boat, put up the sail, let go and let the meditation process happen.

    If it feel like a ‘TODO’, that is okay, let it be a TODO and continue.

    Also suggest you research “The Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind”, find a good book or read online. Contemplate those every chance you get.

    That should help till your garden some more and get more of your minds processes in-line with your intention to meditate.

    Do persist, it is worth it.

    Hope that helps some.

    Sincerely,
    -Ivan/

    #595

    Kurt S
    Member

    I’m neither experienced or knowledgeable, but it seems to me that if meditation has become a chore you should meditate on why this is the case. Sit with the feelings of boredom, frustration… whatever the feelings are and just experience them. Try to disengage from identifying with the feelings and emotions. Treat the feelings like you would the sound of a bird chirping, merely observe them without identifying with them. Simply being able to do this is progress itself.

    #600

    praxis
    Member

    Thanks Ivan, Thinking about what you have said one idea I have had is to focus on the feeling of each breath as much as I can and trying to make my focus better than the last one, like a game finding positiveness when it is improved.

    One of the things I liked about “The Mind Illuminated,” was the structure and gradually introducing techniques with sort of goals for each stage. Now I don’t mean this as a criticism I generally want to understand why it is the case, but I find it confusing (maybe due to my strong western mindset) that you should meditate with no goals in mind. As pretty much everything we do in life has an underlying goal whether it is to achieve something or feel something pretty much every action you take has an outcome in mind. furthermore generally I think I learn a skill better by having an outcome in mind for that skill and adjusting my technique until I achieve that outcome consistently. So I find it confusing why someone would want to sit down and not do anything with no outcome in mind.

    I will definitely try to look into “The Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind”

    Thanks Kurt, that’s an interesting idea I will have to investigate how to observe thoughts without engaging with them do you have any recommendations?

    #601

    Ivan Ganza
    Member

    Hi Praxis,

    My intention was not to communicate that one should have no goals.

    It is alright to have goals and work towards them. The goals should be approached in a playful way though — with as little attachment to them as possible. It is a subtle, distinction but important.

    Use the map to check where you are, check what you need to work on, set your goals/intentions, then put that down for a while — let it play out —

    Have the goals, but try not to be too attached to when and how they play themselves out….

    Cheers,
    -Ivan/

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by  Ivan Ganza.
    • This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by  Ivan Ganza.
    #604

    Kurt S
    Member

    Praxis,

    I can only speak from my personal experience and understanding, and I’m not a teacher, but maybe some of what I have to say could be useful to you.

    Setting and following through with goals is a part of our every day human existence. Goals and intentions certainly have their place. With meditation though, setting goals can be a trap or a hinderance. Ivan has mentioned being playful with the goals, and in my mind this is a good way to be laid back about them. You see, the problem with goals is we often become attached to the desired outcome. Should the actual outcome be different than the desired outcome, we often can become sad, frustrated, or experience other emotions. In contrast, when we set a goal and we achieve it, we can also become attached to the outcome we set out for and the positive feelings associated with it.

    You may say to yourself, I want to progress to the next stage of Culadasa’s book. My goal is to move from stage 6 to stage 7, or my goal is to to sustain Jhana, or my goal is to become enlightened. You sit, and it seems like you are not achieving your goal. Inevitably, if you are attached to the desired outcome you’ll say to yourself something along the lines of, “I’m not progressing!” and you’ll believe it.

    We do this all the time not just in meditation, but in life, we say to ourselves “I just want to be happy”, “I just want to be relaxed”, “I want to be enlightened”, etc. Anytime you say “I want”, you are saying you don’t have it. “I want to progress” is the same as saying “I’m not progressing.” Take away the “want” the “attachment” and you can begin to move forward. Meditation, I’ve found, is less about gaining things and more about removing them. In a lot of ways it’s like peeling the layers of an onion away until nothing is left.

    There’s a lot more to say about this, and I’m sure entire books have been written on this single topic alone. The best advice I can give you is the advice I follow myself and that is to let meditation happen, don’t try and DO meditation. The joy you are looking for will come, insight will come, but so will your legs falling asleep, difficult emotions, strange sensations and all sorts of other things. The more you are willing to accept whatever presents itself as it is presented, without attaching anything to it, the more you’ll understand.

    I hope that helps.

    #607

    Hi Praxis,

    Lots of good advice above. But I have two questions for you. 1. what’s personally motivating you to want to practice? In other words, what’s bringing you to the cushion in the first place – and there’s no “right” answer to this. 2. how long are you meditating for?

    Matthew

    #610

    praxis
    Member

    Thanks Ivan and Kurt, I will probably have to read all your comments more than once to fully appreciate them, but ultimately will have to work at being less attached to my goals in the way both of you have suggested, so thanks for your help.

    Matt, My personal motivation for meditating in the first place is to help me deal with anxiety. I am generally a very anxious person and over the years have tried a number of different things which have helped to varying degrees, but it is still there and affecting me and after reading about the benefits of meditation I have been trying it on and off for a while now. I usually meditate for half an hour each day, setting an alarm at the beginning with a calming sound that goes off after half an hour.

    #611

    Kurt S
    Member

    You have two very capable teachers in this thread, so I’m sure whatever they say will be more helpful than what I have to say. However, as someone who also came to meditation to relieve stress and anxiety maybe it will be useful if I share a few more thoughts with you. This advice comes in two parts.

    The first part is learning to be in the present moment. Anxiety is usually related to concerns about the future… “What if X happens?”, “What if X doesn’t happen?”. Sometimes the anxiety also dredges up unresolved things in the past to help fuel the fear of the future. Before we know it we are pulled away in those thoughts, we lose ourselves to them. By learning to be in the present moment, you are learning to be with what is, not what was or what may be.

    For me, the first big step with this was learning to recognize when I had been pulled away in compulsive thinking. I used breath counting early on to show me when my mind started to slip away from my focus object. If I lost count of what number I should be on, or if I forgot that I was supposed to be counting entirely, it was a signal that I got carried away by my thoughts. Eventually, I learned to recognize negative thought patterns as they occur, and in deeper states of meditation, recognize them before they occur. Eventually counting becomes unnecessary entirely.

    Once you can recognize the thoughts before they pull you away on the anxiety ride and take hold of you. The next step is to let the thought pass on. Don’t let it take hold of you, but also don’t push it away either. Just let the the thought happen and let it go. If you are meditating move back to your breathing, if you are at work go back to what you are doing. This process of continually returning to your breathing, guiding your attention back to your focus object, is meditation. Learning to do this is the first step to staying present with what is real, what is actually happening right now.

    So that was part one, part two will be shorter I promise 🙂

    Part two has to do with the idea that meditation will help you relax and relieve stress. I think a lot of people have this misconception about meditation, they see the pictures of someone smiling with their eyes closed in the lotus position and they think it looks very relaxing. I had the opportunity, unusually early, in my practice to be shown that this assumption was incorrect. Meditation is not always a relaxing experience, and becoming attached to pleasant states, sitting with the purpose of obtaining them can become a trap. Meditation can and will help you work through a lot of things, but it’s going to be work, at times even painful. At least, that’s been the case for me.

    I really don’t want to discourage you from sitting though, or even from having goals. Just be okay with whatever happens during meditation and keep up the practice. In Zen they say, “Just sit.” It’s quite profound how much is in those two words, really.

    #612

    Praxis

    First of all, it’s great that you’re so clear on your motivation. With that motivation I also wonder if a guided relaxation/meditation might not be better. The Insight Timer app (the paid version) has a lot of guided meditations – many of them geared toward stress reduction and relaxation. You may have to experiment to find one you like. Also, maybe 30 minutes is too long. It seems likely that less might be more for you. Better to do 15 minutes and feel positive then 30 minutes and stressed.

    Hope this helps

    Matthew

    #614

    praxis
    Member

    Thanks again Kurt, it’s good to speak to someone who has been through something similar to me. That is a good idea I think trying to learn to recognize when these stressful feelings are occurring and learning to pull myself away from them and back to whatever I am doing whether it is work, meditation or whatever I am focused on at that time. It is similar to when meditating to recognize when you are going to be distracted and refocusing on the breath. One thing I thought of which is somewhat related to your first point in this topic as well is perhaps applying the mindfulness practice from appendix E to these “unwholesome,” thoughts that may be leading to my stress so that I can better recognize those thoughts when they come and bring myself back to the task at hand. I would be interested in hearing how you saw first hand how meditation isn’t always relaxing, as I think I understand how meditation could help me but think it would be interesting to hear about someone who also had to struggle.

    Thanks Matt. I have looked at guided meditation before (Headspace) and have found it can relax me as I am doing it but seems to wear off pretty quickly afterwards. I also think I understand somewhat how non-guided meditation may be able to help me long term with my anxiety, but from what I have read about guided (which is admittedly limited) it doesn’t really seem to be as long term. Also does guided meditation fit anywhere into the framework of the book or is it just an extra tool you were suggesting. That may be a good idea as well reducing the length of my sessions, as I do find at the 15 minute mark is when I start to get restless.

    Thanks once again to everyone for your help.

    #616

    Kurt S
    Member

    I’m glad to hear that you are going to start doing the Mindful Review practice, I’m sure you’ll find it very helpful.

    As far as my own practice, specifically with non-relaxing experiences during meditation, I’m not sure how helpful it would be to go into detail about those, other than to say that in the same way that each moment of our lives is a unique experience, each moment of meditation is a unique experience. It’s true that in meditation the mind becomes calm and the body becomes relaxed, but sometimes other things happen too. I don’t feel very qualified to speak to those things with any degree of certainty, this is where one of the teachers on the board would be much more helpful than myself.

    Just keep up with your mindful review and sitting meditation, be receptive to whatever happens, and you’ll do great. It sounds like you are heading in the right direction.

    #617

    Anonymous

    I have a different kind of suggestion, specifically for the beginning meditator who is troubled. If you feel aversions at the end of your meditation, this memory is left in your subconscious and the next time you go to your cushion, your mind says, “I rather NOT do THAT again!” So you can take time at the end of your meditation effort to cure your residual aversions.

    When your meditation effort is over, move your posture just a little to relax yourself and shift to a mood of enjoying the moment, your hard work is over. If you had strong sensations, these are not ‘resistance’, but normal nervous system responses to your practice; these arose and now they have passed away. If you had strong thoughts or emotions, these also have passed away; remember and reexperience their coming and going. Relax silently into the relief you are feeling, because your effort is over.

    Then give yourself a full body massage. Rub your hands together and then rub your face with strong attention to the sensations there (this is a trip!), then your scalp, then on down your body parts, rubbing in same direction as your body hair growth. All the way down to the bottoms of your feet, maybe two minutes for starters. Now this grand feeling is what your mind will remember the next time you go to your cushion, and you are enjoying your approach to your cushion. This is going to feel sooo goood… after I finish meditation. Just a special practice in “letting go”, which you will later phase out as unnecessary, because you have acquired the skill. If successful, just looking at your cushion will make you feel cheerful.

    30 minutes per sit is fine for the beginner, and work toward 40 about Stage 6. If you need to notice progress, you need twice per day. Postpone if you feel crappy or sick. The beginner needs to keep aversions out of his practice, at first. Otherwise, no excuses.

    Praxis, Dude!

Viewing 13 posts - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic.